GeForce GTX 480 SLI vs. Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire: Round Two. Page 7

In the first round of the fight between contemporary multi-GPU heavyweights GeForce GTX 470 SLI tandem won. Today we are going to find out how much faster a configuration of two GeForce GTX 480 graphics cards will be.

Far Cry 2

The Nvidia tandems are both limited by the CPU in display modes up to Full HD whereas the Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire proves that AMD solutions have some elbowroom there. The GeForce GTX 480 SLI is unrivalled at 2560x1600, notwithstanding its rather weak texture-mapping subsystem. It may only be challenged by a 3-way CrossFireX subsystem built out of a Radeon HD 5970 and a Radeon HD 5870.

Metro 2033

This game is tested without multisampling antialiasing as it worsens the textures and provokes a performance hit.

The multi-GPU subsystems are both ahead of the dual-processor solutions from a lower category and go neck and neck with each other. The Nvidia platform can boast a higher bottom speed at resolutions below 2560x1600 but this advantage has little practical worth. The Zotac card behaves superbly and might be used to build a very quiet GeForce GTX 480 SLI tandem but few computers would accommodate two graphics cards with three-slot coolers!

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

We use the game’s DirectX 10.1 and DirectX 11 modes for graphics cards that support them.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 SLI grabs top place in this test and, what is even more important, makes the resolution of 2560x1600 playable. The weaker 470 SLI subsystem cannot do that. The result is good considering the high system requirements of this game. The Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire cannot leave the single Radeon HD 5970 far behind, just as it couldn’t in some previous tests.

Wolfenstein

This game is tested in multiplayer mode that uses the OpenGL API. The integrated benchmark does not report the bottom frame rate.

The GeForce GTX 480 SLI tandem is ahead of its rival but by a very small margin. We can say that they are equal, especially at 2560x1600. The game having modest system requirements, the single GeForce GTX 480 is quite enough for normal play, though.